


Frosted Pink

by Chromi



Series: Arrhythmia [5]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hospital, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Arrhythmia!verse, Attempt at Humor, Birthday, Birthday Cake, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:06:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26449000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chromi/pseuds/Chromi
Summary: On Marco's birthday, a gift for him arrives in the cardiology department, thus ruining his attempts at keeping his birthday a secret from his team.Arrhythmia!verse, set pre-main series.
Relationships: Akagami no Shanks | Red-Haired Shanks/Fushichou Marco | Phoenix Marco
Series: Arrhythmia [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1527563
Comments: 9
Kudos: 35





	Frosted Pink

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tellmewhatyousee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tellmewhatyousee/gifts).



> Surprise!! Big thanks to the lovely C for asking for Marco on his birthday + Shanks + surprises in the Arrhythmia!verse ♥ this was fun to write!

Marco hadn't been in his office when the _incident_ had happened.

As was usual for Marco, cardiology registrar, on a Friday morning, he was on the ward, leading the ward round in the absence of his consultant (who, Marco had noted with a sigh, probably _was_ in the office), when one of the ward nurses approached him, phone in hand, grinning from ear to ear and filling Marco with a unique kind of dread.

“You didn't tell us it was your birthday today, Marco,” she giggled, fluttering her lashes in a manner that did absolutely nothing to alleviate the confusion that settled with her words. “Why're you at work today? That can't be much fun.”

Marco blinked at her, caught off guard. His team around him, consisting of the junior doctors, the physio who had popped up for the morning, and the other reg two years his junior, murmured among themselves with interest, all eyes on Marco and his bewildered frown.

“Uh,” he said uselessly, glancing at the phone pressed to her palm, “yeah, it is, but... what?”

There was a reason why he hadn't told any of his co-workers, preferring to keep that bit of information tucked away and out of sight. Turning 36 wasn't fun for anyone, and, on a somewhat more personal level that had nothing to do with these people as individuals and everything to do with Marco as a person, he didn't _want_ their temporary interest in his personal life. His placement in this hospital would be over come February, and then, once moved, he would most likely never see a single one of them again... with the exception of his overseeing consultant who, Marco probably admitted far too readily to anyone who would listen, commanded his utmost respect and would likely remain as a source of professional interest for years to come.

It was less to do with being aloof and distancing himself from others out of dislike, and more to do with avoiding setting himself up for missing people once their daily lives no longer crossed. If he didn’t get too close to anyone, then he could sidestep the inevitable difficulties of keeping in contact once he was off and away, learning new skills and meeting new teams every six months to a year during his stint as a registrar cardiologist. Experience had brought with it good friends who now resided hundreds of miles away, and, with the exception of Thatch (who Marco was quite sure he wouldn’t be able to shake off even if he had _wanted_ to), Marco hadn’t seen any since working with them.

So, no. Marco didn’t have anyone here that he would say he was friendly enough with to warrant mentioning that today was his birthday to.

Setting Marco's lack of local friends quite aside, he frowned at the nurse, not taking an awful lot of comfort in her broad grin.

“Who's on the phone?” He asked, nodding at it. “Is it for me?”

Yes. The answer was clear as daylight in the nurse's poor attempt at swallowing her amusement, eyes shining bright. Marco held out his hand for the phone, the weight of his team's keen stares pressing heavy on his back. Whoever was on the other end was the obvious source of revealing Marco's birthday, which only served to confuse him further. Edward Thatch, his best friend since university, currently worked at another hospital not too far away, so he couldn’t be involved.

No one in this hospital should know it – no one except—

Marco's blood seemed to turn to ice in his veins.

No one except for his partner, Shanks, a paramedic, and one who was freshly transferred to this hospital along with Marco and currently supposed to be fast asleep at home in their tiny apartment following a night shift.

Marco mentally scolded himself, giving his head a little shake. It couldn't be Shanks. Shanks wouldn't ring him via the ward phone for any reason other than an emergency, and this _couldn't_ be an emergency if he had the time to spare to inform random nurses of random registrars' birthdays.

The phone was warm against Marco's ear as he licked his lips nervously.

“Dr. White speaking.”

Professionalism first; the juniors' respect for him as their senior would fast shrivel up if Marco let himself slip, and that would invite assumed closeness on their part and, God forbid, they'd start using his _name_ and being all _casual_ about it, too, when they themselves were due to rotate specialties just next month.

Only it was not Shanks on the phone at all, surprising Marco into relaxing his grip on the phone a little.

“Oh, Marco?” Trilled a woman's voice, overly cheery. “It’s Kuzan's secretary here! You okay? Have I caught you at a bad time? Are you still on ward round?”

_No, yes, and yes. Well, sort of. Depends on why you're calling._

“I’m just about to finish up,” Marco said. “What’s up?”

Kuzan's – Marco's overseeing consultant cardiologist’s – voice rumbled in the background before Marco could respond, confirming his suspicions that he _had_ been slacking off – sorry, _giving his junior the freedom to exercise his authority on the ward,_ obviously – in their office on the floor above rather than herding the team from bed to bed himself.

“I'm not gonna wait forever for him,” Kuzan said, “tell him to hurry up if he's done down there.”

Marco's heart leapt up into his throat at the growl in Kuzan's voice.

“So, uh, Marco?” The secretary whose name Marco had no recollection of said, sounding worryingly tentative in her word choice. “You've had a delivery to the office.”

_Oh._

Marco breathed a sigh of relief, looking up to catch the eye of the nurse who, strangely, was watching him with rapt attention.

“Is it the sample pots we ordered?” He asked. “Is there anywhere you can put them until I—?”

“Uh, no,” the secretary cut in, her voice tilting into a higher note, “no, they've not arrived yet. This is... um... it’s...”

“Huge,” Kuzan barked in the background, followed by a hearty laugh.

_Oh, god._

“What's huge?” Marco asked, doing his best to ignore the way one of the juniors shot a sideways smirk at another.

The secretary paused for an eternity, then said in a would-be casual voice, “you didn't tell us today was your birthday, Marco. We would have got a card for you.”

Dread consumed him when he handed the phone back to the nurse, not daring to meet any of his clinical team's eyes. He dismissed them, ending the ward round, and, with mounting trepidation and a sense of foreboding that only ever seemed to show itself when either Shanks, Thatch, or his father were involved, Marco hurried off to the ward's exit and took the stairs to the level above two at a time.

He hadn't asked the secretary what she was getting at, her cryptic message going unchallenged thanks to Marco's haste to get off the phone and up to the office, and he regretted this oversight as he crashed out of the stairwell on the next floor up.

_Something huge. His birthday. Something huge to do with his birthday in his office, in front of Kuzan and the secretarial team. Maybe the other cardiologists, too. Crap._

His hand slipped on the door handle of the cardiology admin corridor.

To his great surprise, the secretary – a young woman with long, dark curly hair and more piercings adorning her ears than Marco could make any sense of – was waiting for him on the other side of the door, startling him into premature speech.

“I’m not old,” he said stupidly, the words spilling out of him without thought, “I haven’t ignored my birthday because of my age, if that’s what you—”

The secretary snorted a little laugh, her eyes twinkling.

“Of course you aren't,” she said consolingly, taking him by the elbow to needlessly steer him into the first office on the right, “we were just shocked when... Well,” she grinned, pausing with her hand on the door, straining Marco's poor heart to its limit, “if we had _known_ , we might not have been so... Kuzan's probably already got started, I don't trust the other girls to tell him no...”

Marco's sigh ruffled her hair yet only seemed to brighten her smile. Thank goodness she wasn't being vague. He wouldn't have wanted _that_ , now would he?

“Got him!” The secretary chirped as they entered the office, her grip on his elbow firm and unyielding. “Kuzan, _honestly_ , _don't_ touch it! It's not for you!”

It took Marco perhaps a full second to digest what he was seeing; what had arrived for him on his birthday in plain sight of his co-workers yet hidden from him, the one person who should have probably been clued in on such a... _unique_ gift.

For there, in the center of the already over-crowded office with its too-many-desks and too-many-people, sat what was without a doubt the single biggest cake Marco had ever seen in real life.

Colossal: that was the word that sprang to mind as Marco stared, open-mouthed, at the gigantic pink-frosted cake. Easily standing at a ridiculous two, maybe three, feet tall and adorned with tiny little sugar stars, flowers, and hearts, the monstrous cake looked like something straight out of a child's tea party, only sized up to incredible proportions. If he had thought he could somehow talk his way out of admitting that the behemoth was for him, he was quite wrong, for on the top of the violently pink cake, the words _Happy Birthday Marco_ were badly iced in blue.

Marco swallowed, his mouth having gone dry, and blinked a couple of times to make sure that this wasn't some kind of delirium-induced hallucination and there really was a cake the size of the desk it sat on staring back at him. Yes, it was still there, even when he discreetly pinched the inside of his wrist in monumental disbelief.

There was no way he was going to be able to live this one down. No way at all. Goodbye, perfectly manicured professional standing.

“Ah, Marco,” Kuzan rumbled, dragging Marco out of his state of shock, “good, you're here.” He held up what looked like a napkin he'd got from the kitchen and one of the hospital's forks. “Are you going to serve up?”

Marco stuttered, stumbling over his words. “I, uh,” he choked, looking from the cake to his senior to the shining faces of the whole secretarial team, and, oh, _wonderful_ , there in the corner sat Borsalino, a smirk plastered over his face, of course. “I'm...” He ran a hand through his hair, wishing they would all stop staring like that. “What is this?” He landed on at last, just a touch desperate.

“It's cake,” Kuzan said, bemused, raising an eyebrow. “Birthday cake.”

Marco's throat seemed to close up before allowing him to speak again.

“Yeah, I can see that, thanks,” he said, raising a snicker from one of the secretaries. The sound seemed to click something into place in his mind, though, for the next question of, “why's it so _big?”_ came far more easily, the horror accompanying the stink of sugar beginning to ebb away a little.

The curly-haired secretary threw back her head and laughed among the outburst of giggles from the rest. “We think there's someone hiding in it,” she said, thumbing away a tear from her eye, “we've been talking to the cake as if there is.”

Marco caught Kuzan's eye and had to immediately look up at the ceiling, the mental image of his mentor chatting animatedly with a giant cake one that was just too much to be coping with.

But her words struck him, made him look at the cake in a different light. A far more appraising light. A light that highlighted the fact that if a grown man of, oh, say, Shanks' height was to crouch and curl up, they might be able to fit in a cake of such insane dimensions...

_No. No. No way._

Marco stared at the cake, deaf to the chatter that flitted between his co-workers in his silence as he waited. Waited. Waited... for what? Was he really expecting Shanks – his darling partner Shanks the paramedic, love of his life – to burst out of it, here, surrounded by nearly everyone Marco would _really_ prefer not to see his cake-covered boyfriend?

_No. Of course not. That’s completely ridiculous._

Marco felt his shoulders sag with his sigh, and even caught himself smiling reluctantly at the absurd thought.

“I reckon I could fit in that,” Kuzan's casual remark permeated Marco's swirling thoughts, tapping his fork to his chin. “Yeah, if I balled up really tiny, I could get in that.”

Marco's shoulders stiffened on reflex.

_Although_... _it_ was _a damn big cake…_

“Can I have that for a moment?” He asked, holding out a hand to Kuzan. “I need to check.”

It was with a great, deep laugh that Kuzan handed over his fork, slapping it to Marco's palm.

“What'll you do if you _do_ find someone in there?”

_Honestly? Probably strangle him._

“I have no idea.”

But there was no need to have worried. On angling the fork to the very center of the cake and letting it sink down until almost the entire thing was sheathed in the sponge, Marco's worries of his boyfriend bursting out of the cake were mercifully put to rest, meeting nothing but cake as far down as the fork would reach. He got the same result on poking it into the side of the cake, too. It was a shame, therefore, that while _that_ particular avenue of horror was successfully closed, Marco's anxiety opened up the path to all sorts of comments and snorts from the admin team.

“I didn't _really_ think there was anyone in there,” one of the secretaries commented matter-of-factly.

“Neither did I,” the curly-haired secretary said with a laugh.

“Oh, same,” another added, grinning as Marco dithered, holding the cake-coated fork aloft like a weapon, “who would it even be? That paramedic who dropped it off was _carrying_ it; I doubt he could have lifted—”

Marco spun around, glaring at the poor woman with such intensity she was in very real danger of combusting in her seat.

“Who?” He demanded, passing the fork to Kuzan when his waving in Marco's periphery caught his attention. There was no way. Absolutely no damn way. _“Who?”_ He urged when the woman only spluttered, clearly stunned by his ferocity.

Shanks was meant to be at home; that had been the point, the logic behind keeping the night shift he'd been scheduled for. Work through the night, sleep through Marco's shift, be ready for dinner and whatever other surprises he had alluded to once Marco got home. So Shanks couldn't have been here, except apparently he had been.

He was starting to get a headache.

Marco's eyes flickered back to the cake, which Kuzan was looking longingly at. Shanks couldn't bake, and the thing _screamed_ of homemade. No bakery that wanted to remain in business would have produced that.

And if not Shanks...

Marco pinched the bridge of his nose as the face of his best friend, Thatch, whose passion was cooking anything and everything, flashed through his mind's eye. _Surely not. Surely he wasn’t involved._

“Who was the paramedic?” He repeated himself with a forced sort of calm that clearly scared rather than comforted the secretary. “Who was he?”

“I didn't catch his name,” she admitted, attention briefly caught by Kuzan's secretary snapping at him to leave the cake alone again. “He flashed his badge, obviously, but I... He told us you knew him. He had loads of red hair—” Marco sighed hard through his nose, nostrils flaring, “—and was with someone who said he was your friend; he had a goatee—”

Marco's forehead hit his palm with a slap.

What were they _thinking?_

“I hate to be demanding anything of the birthday boy,” Kuzan piped up before anyone else could speak, sucking on the end of the fork, “but seeing as you're here now and on your feet, would you do the honors of serving up?”

The chance to slip out of the spotlight was welcomed with open arms. Marco scuttled off to the kitchen that the cardiology department shared with the rest of the offices on the floor, intent on loading up with napkins, a knife, and plenty of forks. And, curiously, despite being embarrassed beyond words and confused enough to not focus on what he was doing, making it halfway back to his office before realizing he had grabbed a fistful of knives rather than forks, Marco was... actually kind of happy. The team's clear entertainment and joy was palpable, each of their shining grins and the unique buzz of excitement that only surprise cake could bring turning infectious in Marco, giving way to a pleasant warmth in his chest.

He paused outside his office, pulling his phone out of his pocket with some difficulty thanks to his arms being full, intent on pinging Shanks a quick message. But then, as he opened up a new text message, the chattering voices on the other side of the door caught his attention as his name was mentioned. Leaning in a little closer, Marco listened hard, not entirely sure what was preventing him from just going back inside.

“Hang it up, already!” One of the secretaries was saying, sounding anxious. “He'll be back any second!”

“Ah! I dropped the tape!” Another wailed, followed by a clatter of what sounded like pens rolling across a desk.

“I _wish_ he'd told us sooner, we could have prepared something better than _this_ ,” came a third scathing voice, piquing Marco's interest.

“Hey, it's not our fault they won't let us put in for color cartridges anymore. He'll have to make do with gray.”

“You misspelled his name,” Kuzan's deep voice boomed clear through the chatter. “Look, it reads _happy birthday, Macro_.”

Snorting a little laugh that was lost under the despairing howls of horror and frantic hisses of, “print it again! Quick!”, Marco opened the door back into the masses of temporary work colleagues who were starting to feel a little more familiar and warmer than Marco had ever intended for them to do so...

... Maybe he could almost see the point of Shanks' shenanigans after all.

* * *

“Am I a good boyfriend, or am I a good boyfriend?” Shanks' voice shook with pride through the phone ten minutes later, sounding distinctly awake and alert for someone who was supposed to have been sleeping mere minutes ago.

Marco hummed, smiling. “You're a crafty boyfriend,” he said fondly, watching an ambulance pull into the hospital grounds from his vantage point several floors up, tucked away in the corner of his office and quite forgotten by the team now that the cake was cut and being passed around. “I hear you roped Ed into this nonsense?”

“Yup,” Shanks said happily, “it was a stroke of genius on my part, Marco, honestly. I'm so clever, you're gonna be _so_ impressed when you hear what I did.”

“Am I?” Marco asked, thoroughly amused. “I'm on the edge of my seat with anticipation already.”

“I didn't work last night,” Shanks announced as if declaring the cure for cancer, self-satisfaction ringing in his voice.

“I figured,” Marco said, “seeing as you're dead to the world the day after a night shift, normally. There's no way you'd come up here first thing in the morning if you hadn't slept all night.”

Shanks hummed a pleased little sound. “I swapped shifts _weeks_ ago just for this. You wanna know what I did instead?”

“Made a cake, at a guess?”

“Uh-huh! I stayed over at Ed and Fee's, and we spent all night making that monster of a thing. I don't even wanna tell you how much sugar we used – I don't think I've ever seen anything like it, babe, it was _horrifying_. Soph helped decorate it this morning before Ed and I dropped it off.”

And there was the explanation for the hilarious quantities of sugared decorations. Marco grinned, unseen by Shanks, but he guessed he would be able to tell regardless.

“I should be mad at you for lying about working,” Marco sighed in fake irritation, “but I guess the cake makes up for it well enough. It's really good – I'll bring some home for you, if you want it.”

Shanks made an anguished, disbelieving sound. “You even have to ask?”

Shanks laughed lightly, and in that moment, Marco wished with everything he possessed that he had just booked his damn birthday off after all rather than taking the high road and insisting he worked it. _People don't care about their birthdays as they get older_ , he had rolled his eyes at Shanks when the subject had been raised in the summer, _no one gives a damn._

Which was categorically incorrect, but never mind that minor detail.

“Anyway,” Shanks said, “there was a method in my madness, y'know.”

“Really?” Marco indulged, glancing over his shoulder at his rioting colleagues, catching snatches of their conversation about drinks and bars and _when do they finish?_ or something to that effect. “What, dare I ask, would that be?”

“The cake's a talking point, right?” Shanks said enthusiastically. “It's got everyone in a good mood, including you, and I bet my right foot they're going to arrange something for your birthday themselves now.”

Marco looked up at the woefully misspelled banner that the secretaries had hurriedly printed and taped together to hang over his desk.

“They already have.”

“Well, good!” Shanks said, his smile obvious in his voice. “Have they asked if you're free to go out with them any time soon, yet?”

Ah. Maybe that was what the talk about the drinks was about. Marco flushed pink and turned his back on the room again, feeling Kuzan's eyes on him over his third slab of cake.

“I don't want to socialize with them, Shanks,” Marco said in a low voice, ducking his head, “you know that. I'll be moving on soon, and—”

“So?” Shanks snorted down the phone. “You're not trying to form lifelong friendships with these guys; just have fun with them here and now, and worry about making permanent friends once you're settled into consultancy. That's what you really want, isn't it? I've given you the gift of _friendship_ , my love, and there's nothing better than _that_ , if you don't mind me saying. I've broken the ice for you, now get in there and have fun, okay?”

He could see Shanks' point. He really could. It _was_ what he wanted, what he struggled against whenever he overheard his colleagues making plans with each other. Maybe it _didn't_ matter if it didn't last forever; maybe it wasn't a bad thing to miss them once he moved on, relying on Facebook updates on their lives until the years intervened and he forgot who they were. Maybe, like the cake that was, despite its size, slowly disappearing as more and more random members of staff swung by the office to get a piece, things didn't _have_ to matter or mean something just to be enjoyed for what they were.

Marco watched his team for a moment, following the two junior doctors who had caught wind of the promise of cake and ventured up from the ward, huge chunks in hand and chatting animatedly with the secretaries. The nurse who had given him the phone was here, too, perched on the edge of a desk and deep in conversation with one of the cleaners who had happened to come in to empty the trash, instead finding herself laden with pink cake.

Shanks had given him this. Shanks had given _them_ this. Though not tangible; though not anything of significance to be remembered fondly in a years' time, maybe; right now, it was an atmosphere of the likes that Marco had sorely missed during his self-imposed exclusion.

“If they invite me anywhere,” Marco whispered into the phone, “you're coming with me.”

“Uh, obviously,” Shanks said, sarcasm thick in his tone. “Oh, and by the way, I have an actual gift waiting for you here at home. And pineapple cake from Ed and Fee, if you can stomach more after all the pink you have there.”

Marco smiled against the phone, heart full of love for his partner. “Thank you, Shanks,” he whispered, “I'll see you in a few hours.”

Shanks clicked his tongue in thought, then said hopefully, “since I'm free, I could come join you for lunch later? How about it? A nice romantic date in the canteen? We can share a plate of fries like the good ol' days. Sound good?”

“That sounds perfect,” Marco said, and he meant it. “I'll see you later. Love you.”

“Love you too, Marco!”

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to fill [my Tumblr](https://chromiwrites.tumblr.com/) inbox with prompts, nonsense, or anything at all! I love to chat TT
> 
> Comments and kudos let me know if I'm doing something right, and I always love your feedback!


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